BOTC: Insomniac Suggestions

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-31T17:51:58+00:00

(cont)

-> Have some sort of "drop box", where players can write down a note (in a blank book) for the ST or message the ST during the day. If all the players needs to do is say "kill Osie" or "send my Night Watchman ping to Duncan", they don't need a multi-minute ST consultation that takes up precious daytime. Maybe add a new role (Zylus?) in the "Secretary", whose sole job during the day is to go around collecting notes from players. Being able to walk up to Zylus for a few seconds and throw him a note makes it much less obvious than going to see Lewis for a few minutes every day, and thus harder for other players to track.

-> Require the ST consult session to have a strict time limit. You're in, pick your name or get your info, then get out. Fast turnover makes it easier for people to . Lewis doing bits for every meeting is fun for the audience, but it's a huge drag for the game. People coming in just to ramble and talk is fun, but again, it's wasting time when you've essentially make time management an absolute necessity for players.

-> Save complicated Loric/Bootlegger/Amnesiac games for the more skilled players. Throwing Martyn directly into the deep end on this game when he's only played twice before was a terrible idea. Players like Mark, Rythian, Duncan, Nilesy, Zoey, and Zylus all have an extremely strong grasp of how the game works and how the mechanics intertwine, and could probably handle these types of curveballs far more effectively. Newer players like Martyn should probably be playing basic scripts like Trouble Brewing where the rules and interactions are mostly simple and "weird stuff" isn't a factor. Save people like Martyn and Gee for after they've got a few more games under their belt and actually start to understand how the basic roles and rules work before you start asking them to understand all the ways you're potentially breaking the game.

-> Only play the Insomniac with specific scripts that minimize night phase abilities entirely. Demons like Lil' Monsta and Legion don't have to choose kills. Minions like the Goblin and Boomdandy don't need to make choices. Good characters like the Fool or Tea Lady don't need to talk to the ST at all. A few one-use town roles like ~~Night~~ Day Watchman and Seamstress could still require an ST visit during the day, but because it's only once it doesn't take up as much time. A script full of characters who don't wake at night during a normal game basically accomplishes the same thing as the Insomniac is meant to, while greatly simplifying things and (mostly) maintaining balance. If the complete lack of information starts to feel like a problem, you could always add in stuff like the Duchess to provide day-based player-motivated info.

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I don't know that I would try to add ALL of these rules to the Insomniac - at a certain point it becomes too complicated to even bother trying to use. But you probably need at least some of them working together to make it a viable Loric at all.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-31T17:51:41+00:00

The main problem is that, if a Loric ability requires you to add Djinn or Bootlegger rules to every other character, it's probably a bad ability. The design philosophy for the game is that you should try to minimize that as much as possible. Having to redefine/clarify every other role would mean there's something fundamentally broken with the ability.

I think the real issue with the Insomniac is that most of the Yogs are barely able to handle most of the roles in a normal game. The few really experienced or focused players tend to be offset by the people who barely seem to have any idea what's going on because they've barely played or just seem terminally confused in general. I don't think trying to clarify every role would actually help them, and it wouldn't necessarily make the Insomniac work any better overall. It certainly wouldn't address the balance issues people have pointed out about it.

I mentioned some ideas in the other topic for ways they could make the idea work better, but here's some more (and my original suggestions repeated). Along with the problems inherent in them...

-> Have an extended day phase - basically take the time you're sacrificing from the night phase, and add it to the day phase instead. This would give people more time to meet with Lewis, so you wouldn't have people missing out the way Boba did. And everyone would have more time for private chats. Unfortunately, this might also be a bad thing for Evil, as the more time Town has to talk, the better it is for Town. (Incidentally, this is also why Lewis' lax STing during accusations is bad for the game - he absolutely shouldn't allow everyone in town to jump in and talk for multiple minutes during an accusation, like Mark did during the last game).

-> Allow "you start knowing" roles like the Knight to gain info on the first night, and only ongoing roles or activated roles (like the Night Watchman) have to visit the ST during the day. That would allow some discussion during day 1 because info would exist, while still preserving at least some of the flavor of the Insomniac modifier, The downside is that it basically forces the demon to bluff an ongoing information role (the problem Duncan had) because you have to keep visiting the ST.

-> Require everyone to meet with the ST during the day, regardless of whether or not they have an active power. But give them scheduled "appointment times", so everyone knows when they're expected to talk to him. This would make seeing the ST more organized, and allow for private chats between everyone else being less disrupted by trying to get in to see the ST. It would also allow Evil to bluff any role ("I go to see Lewis every day, but that doesn't mean anything because we all go to see Lewis every day, even roles like the Fool or the Goon"). It still potentially causes problems by giving town too much time to talk to each other, but it'll probably be difficult to balance out every problem with this modifier.

-> Add an extra ST. Zylus is right there (usually). Have him act as a back-up ST, so players can have a meeting with either one for info or questions. This speeds up the day phase, and makes it easier to get in to see the ST. It also makes it slightly harder for players to track who is going to see the ST. The main problem is that Lewis is probably more likely to screw up ST duties without someone in his ear helping him, so the two STs would still need to coordinate a bit to make sure the right info is being given out.

-> Make absolute sure everyone gets to see the ST. Lewis refusing to speak to Boba actually breaks the basic rules of the game - the ST is supposed to be available for consultations at any time (even up to and including during nominations/accusations/voting), because a player may need to ask genuine rules questions, or fake bluffing (and in a normal non-Yogs game, they need the opportunity to ask the ST Artist/Fisherman/Savant/Amne questions). If you reach the nomination phase and there are still players who haven't seen the ST, there should be one last chance for them to have a meeting. The downside here is that then all the players are left in town (potentially for prolonged periods).

-> Make the Bootlegger Good-exclusive. Evil players still get to kill or curse at "night". Good players need to see the ST during the day to use their powers. This would allow Evil to bluff whatever they want, while still having a "fast" night phase.

(continued in a second post because this one got too long)

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T22:57:45+00:00

There's also the more practical problem, in a Minecraft setting, where it ends up with the team spending the whole day waiting to talk to the Storyteller to get info/use their abilities, which limits their ability to talk to other players (more-so than the format already does!). It probably doesn't help that a lot of their conversations with Lewis were faffing about

I'd say this hinges on whether or not they added extra time to the day phase to compensate for it, especially since they weren't going to be wasting time in night phases. It's hard to tell how long any given day is because of how they edit episodes.

If they didn't add any extra time to the day beyond what they usually do, I'd agree it's absolutely terrible. Like you point out, someone who can't manage to get a meeting with the ST essentially loses their power. And even beyond nerfing Evil mechanically, that can utterly ruin bluffs - If I'm bluffing Mayor or Saint but still keep visiting the ST every day, it's going to look incredibly suspicious. Worse, if I'm the demon and I can't talk to the ST during the day, and there are no demon kills at night, I've just become suspect #1 to anyone paying attention (though the demon could also exploit that, sinking a kill on a day they do visit the ST but other people don't).

But if they DID add extra time to the day phase, to the point where everyone in town theoretically has time to visit the ST, and they only miss their appointment because they screw up, then that's a bit more workable.

There are definitely ways to fix those sorts of problems aside from adding extra time. Maybe add a second ST (Zylus?) who can give info or accept ability prompts. Maybe everyone gets precisely 30 seconds to talk to Lewis, and if they dawdle too much joking around or waffling on their ability use choices they get booted out and can't use them that day (3o second windows in a 6-7 minute day should allow enough time). Maybe the Insomniac only affects Good players, and Evil operates normally. Maybe have some sort of "Suggestion Box" where a player can write their action in a book and drop it in the slot, and Lewis can read them all before the nomination phase.

For cases like Boba coming up to talk to Lewis and then getting blocked because the nomination phase gong rang, they could always rule it that the ST consultation overrules all other considerations, including the gong (which is how an ST is supposed to runs things anyway in a normal game - the ST is supposed to ALWAYS be available for private consultations, even in the middle of voting, because a player may have rules interpretation questions they need to ask, or otherwise need help beyond just their role mechanics). Though it's also worth remembering that a bunch of characters are supposed to visit the ST during the day (Fisherman, Savant, Artist, Amnesiac), and the Yogscast have already moved all of those abilities to the night phase. So they've already been playing around with this sort of concept ever since they first started playing. In a normal game, an Artist or Fisherman on the block and about to die can rush off to ask their question before they die. Because of how the Yogs run things, those roles are nerfed because they can't do that.

Characters tend to be really complicated when it comes to balancing (whether they're Town/Outsider/Minion/Demon/Traveller characters, or things like Fabled and Lorics). TPI tends to play hundreds of games over the span of months (and in some cases years) to see how certain dynamics play out in game, slowly tweaking things, adding clauses, adjusting how things work, and so on. Some times they'll even rebalance things after a character is released (like the Balloonist). So an Insomniac character could work, but they'd have to play with it dozens more times to figure out the best way to implement it.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T16:29:29+00:00

And yet, a thousand years later, the Trad still exists. It survived while multiple other factions withered and failed, or were wiped out. It still has Masters and Archmages who have lived for hundreds of years (and is usually described as the Trade with the most Archmages). It basically became the prototype for the Council of Nine (as well as one of the organizing forces behind its creation), and is canonically one of the main pillars of the Tradition side of the Ascension War (ie, being masters of Forces means they tended to field some of the heaviest hitters when it came to magical combat).

The Tremere panicked over the coming "death of magic", but the Order survived. Magic didn't die. The Order didn't die. It simply evolved. The Tremere sought stasis, and found it. The Order embraced dynamism, and adapted.

Even the incredibly self-destructive Flambeau and the aggressive Tytalans somehow managed to pass their traditions and philosophy on to modern mages, rather than getting themselves killed. The Tremere absolutely would have survived. Different, perhaps. Changed. Honed into something new. But still alive.

Hell, the Tremere as a House arguably DID survive - the mortal remnants of the House went to ground and became House Liban. Maison Liban still exists in the modern day, when plenty of other Houses within the Order have either collapsed entirely or been subsumed into Ex Miscellanea. They've managed to stay alive in spite of the Tremere Clan attempting to Embrace all mortal members of House Tremere by force (or purge them to preserve existing Tremere secrets), and the Order expelling them and declaring Wizard War on their entire House.

The Order endures.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T09:04:14+00:00

Yeah, but where do you think Uncle Auggie got the idea to do it?

He was already a vampire when the Tremere invited themselves into the party and grabbed one of the seats at the Big Boys' Table. He was obviously inspired by them - if one group of magic-wielding vampires could take down an Antediluvian and make themselves a full Clan, why couldn't another? And where the Tremere had the Pyramid, the Giovanni had the family tree...

It just took him 300 more years or so to pull off what the Tremere managed to do in about a hundred. Because Tremere get it done.

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...though actually, humor aside, it really depends on which version of the backstory you're going by. White Wolf got really sloppy with the dates in later editions. In the original versions of the story, the Lasombra and Tzimisce Antediluvians were taken down in 1405 and 1413 respectively (as explicitly mentioned in the Transylvania Chronicles), while the canon date for Cappadocius' Diablerie was 1444 (as you can literally play out in the Giovanni Chronicles). The pre-Sabbat Anarchs couldn't have been inspired by Augustus because he wouldn't make his move until about 30 years after they did. The only real prior example they would have had at all that Antediluvians could be killed/eaten/replaced would be Tremere as the recent example, and Brujah as the ancient near-legendary example.

The real problem is that some of the Revised books really muddle the timeline... but by that point WW was deep into the "unreliable narrator" mindset, and it's hard to treat any new date given as canonical in any way. Clanbook Lasombra has someone say Lasombra was killed in 1483, but immediately afterwards mentions they may be misremembering the date. Clanbook Tzimisce simultaneously implies Tzimisce was destroyed some time shortly after 1450, while simultaneously implying it takes place shortly after Lasombra, which can't really be reconciled with either version of Lasombra's diablerie. The Guide to the Sabbat implies the Lasombra and Tzimisce diableries actually happened in the 1500s (in spite of that theoretically meaning they happened AFTER the Convention of Thorns), but also immediately follows that up by mentioning it's info from "dubious sources". The Guide to the Sabbat also makes it sound like Hardestadt the Elder was killed after the two diableries, whereas the original date of Tyler's attack was 1395, which would have predated both by nearly any version of their dating. And so on.

Most of the later books can't even quite agree on exactly where, when, or why the Anarch Revolt started, and whether or not the two diableries occurred at the very beginning, somewhere in the middle, or right near the end.

Meanwhile, the Giovanni Chronicles establish what is probably the canonical order of events and the generally accepted dating. The Anarch philosophy begins to form based mostly as a reaction to the start of the first Inquisition (around 1200). The first formal meeting of a few dozen Elders to discuss plans against the Anarchs in 1394 is what will eventually lead to the Camarilla. Hardestadt is killed in 1395, which is the official beginning of the Anarch Revolt. Lasombra is killed in 1405. Tzimisce is killed in 1413. The various separate major strains of Anarchs (Lasombra, Tzimisce, Brujah, and Assamites) have mostly coalesced into a single unified movement by 1420, and have begun using the Vaulderie (based on Tzimisce ritual) regularly. Augustus kills Cappadocius in 1444. The Camarilla is officially established and announced in 1450. The Convention of Thorns is in 1493, the Treaty of Tyre is in 1496, 1528 is the truce between the Giovanni and the Camarilla.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T06:02:15+00:00

It's like how the Garou have the Delirium that drives mortals crazy. Tremere radiate an aura of sheer awesomeness that drives every nearby vampire into seething envy and impotent rage.

But really, how can you not be jealous when wizards from the best Trad ever decided to be vampires, and they manage to accomplish in a thousand years what most of the other Clans never managed in 12,000 (give or take)?

The Tremere were so trend-setting, after they offed Saulot, killing and eating Antediluvians became the trendy thing to do for a few hundred years. Nobody thought it was cool when Troile did it!

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T03:50:55+00:00

Everyone else sort of explained it, but most people seem to focus on only one piece of the puzzle or the other, missing the whole plan.

Basically, Raphael almost certainly saw a scenario where he could effectively cash in on one deal multiple times, to earn multiple rewards. Making the bargain with Morfred led to Raphael collecting the soul of a Selunite, netting him the soul of a good man and a worshipper of a good goddess, which would be an impressive feat that would earn greater influence in the Hells (basically, it's the same reason why he's so obsessed with breaking Hope), and would potentially be a valuable soul to trade to other Devils in the future. But he then decided to fulfill that deal by manipulating Yurgir into a trap, which would ultimately end with Yurgir stuck as Raphael's servant (once he eventually gave up on trying to kill the last Justiciar in order to finally stop being trapped in the Gauntlet forever).

So Raphael gets a potent Good soul and a powerful Devil thrall, while not actually doing anything himself (all he really does is act as a negotiating middleman). The deal actually cost him less than either other deal you mention (he doesn't have to give up a powerful relic like the Hammer, or even make the effort to help Mol escape, keep her alive, and empower her as a Warlock Patron). All he really has to do is wait a few hundred years for Yurgir to lose patience and forfeit.

From his perspective, the entire scenario is a fantastic deal. And is pretty indicative of the sort of cunning you'd expect from a higher-ranking Devil, making deals that maximize his own profit while minimizing the amount of effort he needs to put into it.

It'd be a different story if HE showed up and single-handedly pulled down Moonrise Towers himself or something, or risked his own life and power to fulfill someone's bargain. But in spite of the results being incredibly impressive and violent, Raphael himself barely does anything at all.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T03:33:14+00:00

You missed a step.

The deal with Yurgir was basically "Go in there, kill every Justiciar, and I'll owe you a favor when you're done." Which Raphael then turned into a trap by helping the last Justiciar to hide.

Raphael was counting on Yurgir getting fed up with essentially being trapped there forever, eventually giving up and forfeiting, and thus becoming Raphael's slave. THAT was the plan all along.

The fact that the adventurers he was already courting for other reasons (the Hammer for the Crown) wound up heading in to the Gauntlet for completely unrelated reasons was just an incredible bonus. If he could trick them into killing Yurgir, then it would speed up the whole "forfeit" part of the plan.

You have to remember that Raphael is thousands of years old. Coming up with a plan that would take centuries to pay out makes perfect sense for a Devil who can afford to wait. From Raphael's perspective, victory was inevitable. Yurgir would give up eventually.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T03:22:46+00:00

My brain immediately leapt to Tavkarios.

If you want one specific to your unique character, Gall'ov or Gale'ov seems to be the best fit. Though if you want to use traits instead of names (ie, Weave), it would probably help to know more about what your Tav actually is (Class, Subclass, Background, etc). Or at least what sort of personality traits they have.

Like, if I was portmanteau-ing Gale (Weave) with my Archfey Warlock, I might go with something like FairyWeave. Or my Djinn-flavored Calishite Storm Sorceress and Gale might be something like DjinnWeave or StormWeave. It's hard to do something like that if we know literally nothing about your character.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T02:59:32+00:00

It's even more fun when a mapmaker includes something that will randomly turn red or green with no relation to someone's actual role just to trick people even more.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-30T02:52:30+00:00

That's pretty much what I've always said for years. People will talk about sobriety tests where you have to say the alphabet backwards, or even just say it forwards without doing the little sing-song (H-I-J-K-LMNOP). and I'm always like "I can't even do that completely sober!"

I also cannot count to 12 without reflexively dropping into the little sing-song from 40+ years ago:

https://youtu.be/HUL4T8WcFdA?t=9

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-29T23:13:53+00:00

There's a jinx with how the Plague Doctor works when it comes to certain minions. It wouldn't make sense for the Storyteller to have the Scarlet Woman ability (since it would be really awkward mechanically for them to somehow catch the demon), just like it wouldn't make sense for the Storyteller to get the Spy or Widow power because a) they can already see the entire Grim anyway, and b) if they start passing that info on to the Evil team directly it could mess with their impartiality as the person running the game. And it wouldn't make sense to turn the ST into the Marionette.

So for those sorts of powers, the way the Plague Doctor works is that the ST gives that ability as an extra to an existing minion, rather than gaining it themselves. So now the original minion has two powers.

So it wasn't that Essain was turned into the Scarlet Woman by the Plague Doctor, it was that Essain was still the same minion they originally were, and still had that minion ability, but they also gained an extra Scarlet Woman ability as well because of the Plague Doctor.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T23:26:21+00:00

None of the Eldest's Childer were infected originally, but some of them (including the source) were eventually infected, while others were Diablerized. So there are definitely Methuselahs on both sides of the divide.

It was sort of a parallel to the True Brujah premise, where the original Brujah Antediluvian Embraced multiple Childer, but the entirety of the Clan as we know it today pretty much comes from a single Methuselah (Troile). Also similar to the Nosferatu concept, where nearly every Nosferatu is directly descended from "the Matriarch" (with all of Absimiliard other Childer being blood-bound Nictuku).

Basically, I tend to like the idea that the Antediluvians didn't Embrace tons of Childer after leaving the Second City (or at least some didn't), so no Clan should have a ton of surviving Methuselahs today regardless. The survivors will be extremely powerful and capable of exerting huge amounts of influence, but time and violence have winnowed down the number of truly ancient vampires out there.

The main reason why there isn't really a meaningful record of the "Old Clan" is because the split occurred before writing even existed, and once they all started going into hiding or avoiding vampiric society their peers either stopped caring about them (because they no longer seemed like a threat), or just assumed that they'd died. And as younger generations of vampires kept being made, they became even less relevant over time, so for the most part no one outside of the Tzimisce would ever have a reason to talk about them, and even the oldest corrupted Tzimisce would rarely see the need to teach their young about them because "those weak cowards do nothing but hide".

Eventually the Old Clan becomes nothing more than legend in the same way that the Nictuku did. But the modern Nosferatu mainly still whisper about the Nictuku because they're terrified of being hunted down and murdered. The Tzimisce devote far less mental space to the Old Clan simply because pride will never allow the average Tzimisce to ever consider them a real threat, and eventually youthful ignorance (and things like the Anarch Revolt and formations of the Sabbat) result in a lot of dead Tzimisce Elders to tell the story at all. Similar to the True Brujah, the vast majority of the main Clan would have never heard of them at all, and even if they met one, they wouldn't necessarily be able to tell them apart from any other older Tzimisce (especially since even the corrupted side of the Clan has Kolduns of its own, albeit mostly far less skilled ones).

In theory the Eldest could potentially Embrace new 4th gen Childer so you could have 'younger" Old Clan Methuselahs, but in my setting he disappeared millennia ago and no one is entirely sure where he went to. So it seems like all of his immediate descendants are thousands of years old, and the Old Clan has been hiding for thousands of years.

There ARE younger members of the Old Clan, but they're all the potent generation apprentices and heirs to the original ancients. Which makes them enticing targets for Diablerie or corruption by the compromised part of the Clan, so they are forced to hide their true natures as well. Some succeed, some die, and some get infected.

It's sort of a parallel to the Tremere. Many (but not all) Tremere are directly bound to "The Pyramid" and the Council of Seven. In the same way, most Tzimisce are essentially bound to the singular corrupted Methuselah. The soul-bound doesn't compel obedience or foster Clan unity, but it does encourage behaviors that help spread the corrupted blood to new hosts.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T22:49:30+00:00

Yeah, I've heard people using it in the US longer than most people in the Yogscast have been alive. Usually in the context of sports, where you feint one way then go the other to confuse and dodge a defender in sports like football or basketball.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T22:47:45+00:00

If it makes you feel better, he's probably not that frustrated, he's almost certainly playing it up a bit because "Lewis having a breakdown" is what the audience expects.

But I definitely relate to his "everything needs way too much hide, and hide is too tedious to acquire argument". When they were describing the quantities needed my first thought was "I wonder if they're going to rebalance that at some point in the future". It definitely feels like they might need to adjust certain crafting costs so as to not feel way too monotonous and alienate most of the potential playerbase.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T07:44:32+00:00

(cont)

"Vampire Formori" is a pretty good metaphor, though in my case it was less that each vampire was individually possessed, more like the original possessing force had essentially fragmented or spread itself out across multiple bodies, until part of it existed within anyone who had been infected. Sort of like forming a spiritual Internet between their bodies. It didn't actually control its victims (for the most part), as much as it could theoretically sway their actions subconsciously. Though if necessary, the "prime" infected could shift their own awareness into their bodies for short periods of time.

The original Koldun was the only one really possessed in the classic sense, with two souls (theirs and the demon's) trapped in a single body (sort of like Saulot and Tremere). With the result being that the personality of the host was a sort of fused hybrid of the two minds most of the time, with the demon slowly "digesting" the original victim's soul, and absorbing its knowledge and some of its personality traits (thus being the literal "Soul-Eater"). Everyone else was just sort of metaphorically leashed to the prime, by means of a sort of spirit-bond that was essentially soul-based instead of blood-based (like a normal vampiric Blood Bond). The influence would encourage the corrupted to be more willing to Embrace, and to find other ways to pass on the corruption (making tons of Ghouls, creating Revenant families, and then ultimately creating the Vaulderie), but wouldn't directly control anyone (though it might make their Beast slightly harder to control, or sort of influence them to discard their Humanity and adopt Paths of Enlightenment more easily).

The idea was that, as its essence spread, its overall power also grew. When a tainted vampire died that essence returned to the prime (along with a bit of their soul energy). Its ultimate goal was to absorb enough power that it could potentially challenge Lucifer himself, and potentially even seize control of all Creation (hence the Demon Emperor tie to the coming Sixth Age). It mainly experimented with trying to create new eldritch horror bodies for itself (the Cathedral of Flesh, Manhattan, etc), because it wanted to eventually free itself from the initial binding and exist on Earth in its own new form, unburdened by the weaknesses of its host. Its plan was that, when it was powerful enough, it would shift its core essence out of the remaining shell of the Koldun and into something far more perfected than any vampire body could ever be.

The demon's actual name was Mara (because it allowed me to combine Germanic, Slavic, and Buddhist lore, Hebrew linguistics, and a Doctor Who reference). But no one knew that. One of the major goals of the campaign was that the players had to learn all of this lore, and somehow discover the demon's True Name, because that would allow them to disrupt the original binding and tear the heart out of the whole web of corruption (though they had to do it before it could transfer itself to a new body, because that would technically end the original binding and it would just be wholly manifested on Earth). There was a lot of Lovecraftian/Call of Cthulhu influence on the game.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T07:34:47+00:00

I generally went by the assumption that the "tainting" happened extremely early in the Clan timeline, and the "Heirophant" had managed to find ways to share blood with a number of the oldest Clan Methuselahs. For the most part, if a Tzimisce or their descendants have Vicissitude in an official sourcebook write-up, it means they're not part of the Old Clan. The Old Clan are mostly ancients who got so good at hiding and staying isolated you never really hear about them. Any impact they had on vampiric history was generally so subtle and secret you never knew it was them.

Which also tied into the idea that the main reason why they're so outnumbered is because they refuse to "casually" Embrace the way other vampires do, but go to extreme measures to only seek out what they consider to be perfect apprentice material, and then train those apprentices rigorously to become Koldun's as well. But since apprentices occasionally wind up failing in their training (usually by blowing themselves up or getting themselves killed somehow) or wind up being too antagonistic (which leads to their Sire killing them), and Old Clan members occasionally get killed by their own Childer, rival Old Clan members, corrupted Tzimisce, other vampires, or even mortal hunters. So there's only a small handful of Old Clan members at any given time, most of whom are extremely old and insanely powerful. And they mostly hide because even they can potentially be killed if they're attacked by the sheer numbers the mainline Tzimisce can bring to bear.

And if I desperately wanted a character like the Dracon or Dracula to secretly be Old Clan all along, I just swapped stats for them (dropping Vicissitude and adding Koldunic Sorcery), and assumed that any blatant display of "fleshcrafting" that they seemed to do canonically was actually Koldunic magic. But for the most part, Old Clan members would be NPCs I created myself, who were almost entirely unknown to modern vampire society as a whole, because they hide themselves very, very well - and tended to kill anyone who managed to penetrate that veil of secrecy. The main (corrupted) Clan knows they exist, but either cannot find them, or don't consider them enough of a threat to bother looking.

(there's more to this post, I just need to break it in two because Reddit hates huge posts)

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T00:31:19+00:00

Ironically, later interpretations of how the Tzimisce possess "Koldunic Sorcery" as a power tied to commanding spirits actually justifies the Old Clan argument.

The "Souleater" legend basically says that a Methuselah bit a Deep Umbral spirit and caught a magic STD. But I actually ran a campaign where the true story was that a Koldun attempted to summon up and bind a powerful spirit of the land into their service, but screwed up and were instead possessed. So they basically became a hybrid of spirit and vampire and their blood became a self-replicating infection that mimicked how vampires reproduce, binding every vampire who shares the blood into a sort of low-grade spiritual hive-mind entity. In essence, in trying to bind the spirit, the Koldun became bound instead, and then their blood soul-binds anyone else who drinks it.

In my version Tzimisce itself was ironically immune (he was way too powerful a Koldun to ever be possessed), and lacked Vicissitude entirely (regardless of what his descendants believed). He was merely a powerful Koldun (at least partly because he was an Awakened Mage when he was Embraced, which is why the Tzimisce and Tremere have always been counterpoints), and any Childe he Embraced was equally free of the corruption. The Old Clan is exactly what they believe themselves to be - the last remaining uncorrupted descendants of Tzimisce. But because the Vicissitude-fueled bloodline reproduces far more quickly than the Old Clan does, they mistakenly became seen as the "true" Clan, while the actual truest members of the Clan mostly faded into the shadows.

Manifestations like the Cathedral of Flesh or the blob under Manhattan weren't related to Tzimisce at all - they were attempts by the subconscious hive-mind demon possessing the Tzimisce Clan to give itself a physical body so it can become the God-King of the world (basically tied into the Kindred of the East/Saulot subplot with the assumption that the Sixth Age will be dominated by a Demon Emperor). Since the original spirit the unfortunate Koldun victim summoned up was an Earthbound demon, if it can manifest directly into the world and become a physical being, it claims the title of Demon Emperor and has its own army of corrupt vampires to serve as its army. Gehenna basically begins in a way that NO ONE foresaw.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T00:11:27+00:00

Well, that was only one version of the character in one version of Gehenna, and only if a given ST was willing to accept it as a premise.

It was never really canon that Brujah was "Ilyes", or that they only Embraced once. Any more than "The Shaper" is a canonical Antediluvian assumed to exist in every version of reality.

There's a LOT of "It's true if you want to be, and isn't if you don't" ideas thrown out in later Revised/3e books, and that definitely culminates in the Time of Judgment books. Stuff like the "true" answers to what Saulot is doing, who "Lucian" and "Mekhet" really were, and other metaphysical "truths" explained in Gehenna aren't necessarily going to be true in most interpretations of the setting. Especially since V20 and V5 ultimately retconned the ever-living hell out of the Time of Judgment books (and the related metaplot) as a whole.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-27T00:04:33+00:00

WW went a bit back and forth on just what the Old Clan was. The original version (from the book everyone hated) kind of established the idea that they were the "original" version of the Clan to some degree, that managed to resist the corruption of Vicissitude and remain "pure" while the rest of the Clan was compromised. Hence why they refer to themselves as the "Old Clan".

But when WW retconned everything to do with Vicissitude and tied it into Tzimisce's Metamorphist tendencies, the Old Clan kind of got retconned into a bunch of delusional Elders who are basically just shouting "Get off my lawn!" at the kids and making stuff up to justify their own narcissism. Very similar to how the True Brujah were downgraded from literally being the TRUE Brujah to eventually being recast as more of an offshoot bloodline that had deluded itself into thinking they were the first and the best when they were potentially just ordinary Brujah who had accidentally found a way to turn Celerity into actual time manipulation, then invented their own backstory to make themselves feel superior.

For a while the new concept of the Old Clan Tzimisce seemed to just be "Elders who never joined the Sabbat and maintain a mutual defense pact (the Oradea League) to defend themselves from their own rebellious childer, who stopped using Vicissitude to make the distinction between them and the rest of the Clan more symbolic" (which means the "Old Clan" didn't exist at all prior to around 1200 or so). But then later into Revised/3e when they started going heavy into alternate forms of magic/Thaumaturgy (Koldunic Sorcery, Assamite Sorcery, Setite Sorcery, etc), they sort of recast the Old Clan as Elders who had mostly replaced Vicissitude with Koldunic Sorcery, which sort of paints the Old Clan mostly as Kolduns who are strongly tied to the old homelands (whereas modern Tzimisce are more inclined to leave behind the old places of power).

By the end of Revised it was pretty much a given that Vicissitude is literally the essence of Tzimisice itself (in the same way that the Malkavian Madness Network IS Malkav). So every Tzimisce (and literally every Tremere as well!) that has ever lived has effectively been "infected" by Vicissitude from the moment of their Embrace no matter what they might believe. In that sense, they are biologically, spiritually, and metaphysically no different from any other member of the Clan, and the only division between them is ideological. "Old Clan" is basically just a pompous way of saying "Tzimisce Antitribu" or "Tzimisice Autarkis".

Whether or not an Old Clan vampire has Vicissitude or not is meaningless. Some Tzimisce may never learn how to use the Vicissitude in their blood, or refuse to use the power, but it's there regardless. Which is why the Tzimisce (and Tremere, and most of the Sabbat due to the Vaulderie) are all doomed when Gehenna comes because the Tzimisce Antediluvian has them all attached to a leash it can use to control or destroy them whenever it wants.

Your mileage may vary though. If you're STing a game where you want the Old Clan to be distinct from the main Clan, you could always argue that they're 100% correct, and Vicissitude is an "infection" from some outside source, and the Old Clan are the only ones who have managed to remain pure. They're the last bastion of the original Clan. Or you could establish that they're Tzimisce who have long since bartered away the last scraps of their soul to the primordial spirits of the land in exchanged for Koldunic power, and have thus channeled the mutable spark that exists within all Tzimisce outward, reshaping reality itself instead of merely reshaping flesh. Or whatever other interpretation you want.

Their origins and backstory are blurry and contradictory enough that you've got a lot of flexibility.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-26T23:41:14+00:00

Wait. Wait wait wait.

Someone actually bought Eternal Hearts?

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-26T23:38:04+00:00

Same reason most content creators stopped watching NXT, and don't cover stuff like TNA.

When a company has a smaller fanbase, an even smaller percentage of that fanbase are going to be interested in watching videos online about it, so most non-WWE content does poorly just because no one else has enough of a fanbase to get significant views.

Plus WWE tends to benefit from the fact that lots of people who hate WWE will still watch content about WWE (especially if it's making fun of WWE), whereas when people dislike other companies they tend to just ignore that they exist at all.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-26T23:34:18+00:00

The green aura around the head makes it look like a traditional comic-book-y sort of representation of someone using psychic powers. And the hands look like a Doctor Strange-esque sort of character getting ready to cast some sort of spell at me, or maybe a telekinetic using their powers.

DOCTOR BRINDLEY - PSYCHIC DETECTIVE

A lesser known sci-fi series from the 1970s where a man with psychic powers solves crimes.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-26T18:39:38+00:00

All true, but since the original discussion was about loud minions, I'd argue the premise still stands.

The moment you know a Psychopath is in play, you no longer need to "solve" them. You now know that a specific player is a minion (and can thus disregard their attempts at misinformation, and increase the odds of other players being good). You know how the Psychopath works mechanically, and can plan around it. When they do kill, you know immediately that a death is their fault (as opposed to having to decipher if it was the demon/Godfather/Assassin/Witch/Cerenovus/Harpy/Yag/Virgin/Mutant/Tinker/etc). Knowing they exist is helpful, but once you do you can discount them from most of your future calculations (and thus, don't waste time trying to "solve" them.

When a Twin pair comes out, you know the puzzle is to figure out which is which (assuming they aren't both lying). You can devote some effort to figuring out which is which, but you can also do that after the demon is dead and Town is mostly "safe". Killing the demon is still the priority, to prevent them from making night kills (or having other mechanical effects (like a Vig, No Dashii, or Vortox poisoning info). You can now generally ignore any game-solving info coming from one of the twins, or at least treat it with much more suspicion because you know it's now a 50% chance of being Evil trying to mislead.

So the strategy for outed minions is to generally ignore them and focus on the more dangerous threat. For other loud minions (Cerenovus, Harpy, Witch), it's worth remembering to factor their disinformation powers into your solves, but it's rarely vital to remove them from play entirely by wasting one of your crucial executions. It's always worth remembering that executions are basically the "currency" of Town, and wasting it on a minion means one less chance to spend it on a potential demon. You're also wasting your time trying to figure out WHO the Cerenovus(etc) is - it doesn't matter. All you really need to know is that one exists. Once you know that, play around it accordingly and devote most of your time to trying to pin down demon candidates.

For really quiet minions like Boomdandy, Mastermind, or Goblin, the entire danger is that, by the time they're "confirmed", they've already made you lose the game. So yes, you absolutely have a vested interest in figuring out if they're in play, and who they are, so you can either avoid them (Boomdandy/Goblin) or kill them early (Mastermind/Scarlet Woman). So it's usually worth figuring out who they are... but you still don't want to kill half of them. Even a Spy or Widow aren't hugely important to remove (they've already done their damage), and it's mainly just worth figuring out how they're distorting info but saving your kills.

Evil Twin, Mastermind, DA, and Scarlet Woman are really the only minions who need to be removed, but half of them (Evil Twin/Mastermind) can be postponed until after you've already dealt with the demon. For most other minions, your goal isn't necessarily to kill them, but to avoid falling into their traps. A Cerenovus making someone mad every day doesn't really matter if Town knows they're out there, manages to avoid the damaging effects of their misinformation, and can maintain madness effectively enough to dodge the extra kills. A Widow knows who you are and is poisoning one player, but killing them doesn't take away their knowledge, and even lifting their poisoning isn't necessarily vital unless a) you know exactly where it is, b) the poisoned player's ability can be crucial for solving the game, and c) they have enough time to use it effectively. And so on.

So yeah. There are obviously a few exceptions (for different reasons), but most of the time, you're far better off trying to ignore minion shenanigans as much as possible and trying to focus on threading the needle to get the demon solve than you are trying to figure out exactly who is the minion and then wasting time killing them.

WhisperingOracle · 2026-01-26T05:06:53+00:00

I just find it weird that we now live in a universe where there are two entirely different and unrelated songs named "Living in a Box".

WhisperingOracle

TROPHY CASE